Gaza: the void that nobody fills

Three years on from 7 October, Hamas has not been disarmed. Yet disarmament is one of the pillars of the plan approved by the Security Council in Resolution 2803 of 17 November 2025 (13 votes in favour, none against, with Russia and China abstaining), which recognised the Board of Peace as a transitional administration and authorised it to establish an International Stabilisation Force. The October 2025 ceasefire left the Strip divided: the ‘yellow line’ allocated 53 per cent of the territory to Israel, but according to various estimates, Israeli control had reached 64 per cent by spring, and Netanyahu stated that he was aiming for 70 per cent.

The situation is more fluid than is generally reported. On 6 July, Hamas announced the dissolution of the committee governing Gaza, handing over administration to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a technocratic body created by the Board of Peace. On 30 July, it accepted the Board’s fifteen-point roadmap, which links disarmament to an Israeli withdrawal. However, the Committee has never entered the Strip: Israel has stated that it will not allow this until Hamas has been disarmed. Hamas, for its part, makes disarmament conditional on withdrawal. It is a vicious circle: in the meantime, de facto power remains where it is.

The Palestinian political landscape is playing out against this backdrop of deadlock. Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a new round of talks in Cairo, ahead of the parliamentary elections scheduled by Abu Mazen for 28 November, with the presidential elections having been postponed until 2027. Some analysts, including those at ISPI, warn that the dialogue could end up delaying the vote rather than making it possible. Meanwhile, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the faction led by Mohammed Dahlan – a long-standing opponent of Abu Mazen and close to the UAE – have formed an electoral alliance, as confirmed to the press by Islamic Jihad. In Linkiesta, Marco Pierini captures the essence of this: an anti-Fatah coalition capable of circumventing the constraint that binds candidates to the PLO’s programme.

This scenario raises two issues. The first concerns the persistence of Hamas. Governing a territory is not the same as possessing weapons: what counts are salaries, the police, public services and family networks. The military campaign has destroyed much of the movement’s offensive capabilities, but has not produced an administrative alternative. And if the committee tasked with taking over cannot gain access, the power vacuum remains open to exploitation. This is why force, on its own, is not a decisive solution; and this is why the true test of the plan is not its approval but the sequence of events: verification of disarmament, a phased withdrawal, and the entry of the NCG.

The second point concerns the party in question. Hamas features on the EU list of terrorist organisations, and the Quartet had already called on it in 2006 to renounce violence, recognise Israel and accept previous agreements. National unity is an understandable goal for the Palestinians, but unity achieved without these conditions is incompatible with the international framework on which reconstruction and aid depend. Furthermore, an electoral alliance risks conferring legitimacy at the ballot box on those who have not made any such commitments.

This does not exonerate the Palestinian National Authority, which clearly lacks legitimacy. Abu Mazen was elected in 2005 for a four-year term, which expired in 2009; the last parliamentary elections were held in 2006, and the Legislative Council, which had been suspended since 2007, was dissolved in 2018. On the reform front, there have been some formal steps: a decree of February 2025 abolished the system of subsidies for prisoners and the families of attackers, but Israel and Washington maintain that payments have continued in other forms, even though the PNA denies this. This is a well-established practice. As regards school textbooks, according to IMPACT-se, the 2025–26 curriculum remains largely unchanged despite the July 2024 agreement with the EU, which makes funding conditional on a review of the content; in April, the European Parliament passed resolutions condemning this. Has anything changed? The PNA has consistently rejected the accusation of incitement. Another long-standing practice. Fatah remains the largest faction within the PLO and controls the PNA, but its power rests more on inertia than on consensus.

One final point regarding methodology. It is often claimed that democracy is ill-suited to the Arab world. Experience suggests otherwise, at least in part: Arab citizens of Israel, who make up around a fifth of the population, vote, elect their own representatives to the Knesset, and in 2021 an Arab party joined a governing coalition for the first time – albeit amidst tensions and inequalities that are openly debated in Israel. Could it be that democracy is a good thing for Arabs too, if administered by Israel?

In any case, the plan promoted by the Trump Administration and endorsed by the Security Council is, like it or not, the only one currently endowed with international legitimacy and a clear operational sequence, forming part of the political landscape of the Abraham Accords. If it remains stuck between the disarmament that Israel demands prior to withdrawal and the withdrawal that Hamas demands prior to disarmament, two separate Palestinian entities will crystallise, with Hamas free to rearm and any political prospect becoming increasingly remote.

The plan must also stand up to a timetable that is beyond the control of its author. Israel votes on 27 October for a new parliament, the United States on 3 November for the mid-term elections, and the Palestinians on 28 October for their parliamentary elections. In Israel, the election campaign is intertwined with the Iranian issue: Netanyahu speaks of signs of possible attacks before the vote; former Prime Minister Ehud Barak accuses him of preparing for a war that would delay the election; whilst, according to Channel 12, Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir is reported to have warned the Americans that an imminent conflict could make it impossible to hold the vote on time. Trump has ruled out an attack before the US election, but can we still trust the ever-shifting words of the US President?

Meanwhile, European town squares are filling with young people who, in the name of Palestine, are setting fire to secondary schools or assaulting rabbis, social media is overflowing with grandmothers who were part of the ’68 movement and now shed tears over every piece of fake news, whilst Italian universities – such as the Einaudi Campus in Turin on 7 October – are hosting debates in which Israel is accused of committing genocide against the Palestinians for more than eighty years. That is, well before the state was even founded. Can ignorance and anti-Semitism, hand in hand, help to stabilise the situation in Gaza? We believe not, even if the left-wing parties – with a few forays to the right (isn’t that right, General Vannacci?) – claim that everything is fine and that the Anti-Semitism Bill is unnecessary. Just as, evidently, the study of geopolitics is no longer necessary either. We might ask the young and not-so-young people wearing keffiyehs how long it has been since the last election in Palestine, and why. The answers would be illuminating.